The regulae iuris and human rights as bridges between church and state

Abstract

Remarkably, the legal position of the churches is often approached as if we still lived in the times of the Guelphs and the Ghibelins. The perspective, in other words, is defensive if not competitive in the sense of regarding church and state principally as competitors for a limited space of legitimized power. “Church and state, who wins?” becomes the institutional issue then. More to the point, however, seems to be the normative question: “Law, power and morality, who wins?” In that existential problematique church and state are equally involved and not primarily as rivals.